Rapsodie Nègre
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''Rapsodie nègre'', FP 3, is a work dating from 1917 by
Francis Poulenc Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (; 7 January 189930 January 1963) was a French composer and pianist. His compositions include mélodie, songs, solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music. Among th ...
for
flute The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...
,
clarinet The clarinet is a Single-reed instrument, single-reed musical instrument in the woodwind family, with a nearly cylindrical bore (wind instruments), bore and a flared bell. Clarinets comprise a Family (musical instruments), family of instrume ...
,
string quartet The term string quartet refers to either a type of musical composition or a group of four people who play them. Many composers from the mid-18th century onwards wrote string quartets. The associated musical ensemble consists of two Violin, violini ...
,
baritone A baritone is a type of classical music, classical male singing human voice, voice whose vocal range lies between the bass (voice type), bass and the tenor voice type, voice-types. It is the most common male voice. The term originates from the ...
and piano. It was the composer's first work to be publicly performed. The piece is in five movements, three of them purely instrumental; the central interlude is for baritone and piano, and the finale features all the performers. The dedicatee of the piece was
Erik Satie Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (born 17 May 18661 July 1925), better known as Erik Satie, was a French composer and pianist. The son of a French father and a British mother, he studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, Paris Conservatoire but was an undi ...
.


History

By 1917 the 18-year-old Poulenc, who was then a pupil of Ricardo Viñes, had composed an unknown number of works. His biographer Carl Schmidt lists two earlier pieces known to have been destroyed by the composer, "Processional pour la crémation d'un mandarin" (1914) and ''Préludes'' (1916) both for solo piano. There was a fashion for African arts in Paris at the time, and Poulenc was delighted to run across some published verses, ''Les Poésies de Makoko Kangourou'', supposedly edited by Marcel Prouille and Charles Moulié; the verses were purportedly Liberian, but were a hoax, full of nonsense and Parisian boulevard slang.Harding, p. 13 The extract Poulenc chose to set for the vocal interlude and the finale read:
Honoloulou, pota lama! Honoloulou, Honoloulou, Kati moko, mosi bolou Ratakou sira, polama! Wata Kovsi mo ta ma sou Etcha pango, Etche panga tota nou nou, nou nou ranga lo lo lulu ma ta ma sou. Pata ta bo banana lou mandes Golas Glebes ikrous Banana lou ito kous kous pota la ma Honoloulou.
The work was premiered on 11 December 1917, at one of a series of concerts of contemporary music organised by the singer Jeanne Bathori at the
Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier The Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier is a theatre located at 21, rue du Vieux-Colombier, in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. It was founded in 1913 by the theatre producer and playwright Jacques Copeau. Today it is one of the three theatres in Paris ...
. Poulenc later recalled the circumstances of the first performance:
At the last minute the singer threw in the towel, saying it was too stupid and that he didn't want to be taken for a fool. Quite unexpectedly, masked by a big music stand, I had to sing that interlude myself. Since I was already in uniform, you can imagine the unusual effect produced by a soldier bawling out songs in pseudo-Malagasy!
The ''Rapsodie'' was an immediate success, and was performed several times over the next few years at various venues in Paris. The work won the approval of established composers, including
Erik Satie Eric Alfred Leslie Satie (born 17 May 18661 July 1925), better known as Erik Satie, was a French composer and pianist. The son of a French father and a British mother, he studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, Paris Conservatoire but was an undi ...
, to whom it is dedicated,
Maurice Ravel Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism in music, Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composer ...
, and
Igor Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ( – 6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and American citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century c ...
, who was impressed enough to arrange a contract for Poulenc with a leading music publisher.


Structure

The work, which plays for about ten or eleven minutes,Harding, p. 4 is in five sections: *''Prélude – Modéré'' :A gently-paced opening, in time, which leads into the second movement. *''Ronde – Très vite'' :This movement begins with the unusual
time signature A time signature (also known as meter signature, metre signature, and measure signature) is an indication in music notation that specifies how many note values of a particular type fit into each measure ( bar). The time signature indicates th ...
of , before moving to the more normal and then . The critic James Harding describes it as "breathless … a sophisticated Parisian version of a tribal dance." *''Honoloulou – Vocal Interlude – Lent et monotone'' :The winds and the string quartet do not play in this movement. It is in time; the baritone, accompanied by the piano, sings the nonsense verse in "a monotonous descending figure that sticks maddeningly in the mind". *''Pastorale – Modéré'' :A gentle movement in . *''Final – Presto et pas plus'' :The longest of the movements, in a hectic , interrupted by a brief reprise of the slow baritone solo from the Interlude.


Notes


References


Bibliography

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External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Rapsodie Negre Suites by Francis Poulenc Chamber music by Francis Poulenc Songs with music by Francis Poulenc Rhapsodies 1917 compositions Chamber music compositions with vocals